Creative Polyglot

Tuesday, January 11

We were on a world tour in 64 sentences when suddenly the journey stopped. You must have heard that several airports including London and Paris were blocked because of heavy snow-fall. So I blame this long interruption on snow too. Thanks Santa claus you sent the snow when I needed it. We were in the middle of the ‘to’ crisis, how many ‘to’s are there in French? We have already seen some ‘to’s for a country,continent and a city(Lesson December 5). Let’s rewind a bit.

1.City:

Preposition ‘à’

Je vais àParis. Tu vas à Mumbai.

2.Country/Continent:

Preposition‘en’used for the feminine countries.

Je vais en France. Je vais en Inde.

Time to tackle the masculine side of the world. What are the masculine countries?

Wednesday, December 22

How many aventures you had during your around the world in 64 sentences? I grabbed this chance to fly to magical Paris and had not only one but a series of adventures. I arrived in Paris on the day when the whole city was paralyzed because of heavy snow-fall, spent four hours at the railway station but finally reached my hotel . For the next one I wasn't even prepared. I was all happy and gay wondering around Paris capturing each and every view of Eiffel tower, last stop was Galeries Lafayette to admire the marvelous decoration instead I tumbled from top to bottom on greasy stairs of a café again fortunately nothing broken just some shock. Later on I was mesmerized by the beauty of the Galerie, it was worth falling down for that view. I apologize for not posting yet the next lesson. I will do it very soon and I wish you a very merry christmas!

Sunday, December 5

Last time Sherlock Holmes helped us to solve the mystery of pronominal verbs but who is going to take us on a tour to the planet ‘to’?home to many ‘to’s. How many are there?You have to choose a ‘to’ for a city, one for a country and another for a discotheque or a movie theater! List is long but not endless.

1.City:

Preposition à

Je vais àParis. Tu vas à Mumbai.

2.Country/Continent:

In French everything has a gender so the countries are divided not in continents but in masculine and feminine genders. The countries given below are on feminine side, India, Italy or France seems to have some feminity but I don’t understand why Great Britain and Spain are feminine ? We can even organise a debate on this issue!

Friday, December 3

Triple A’s journey continue on the TGV tracks to Brest. It’s snowing heavily and they are stranded in 30 cms of snow at Lamballe. What do we do when there is nothing to do? Either we watch TV, eat or talk. Don’t we? Well! there was no TV and the food is so expensive in TGVs so Triple A and the Bretonne lady preferred to talk.

Nolwenn: Où allez-vous?

Amrita: Nous allons à Brest. Et vous?

Nolwenn: C’est une jolie petite ville. Je vais à Morlaix.

Anita: Est-que c’est une grande ville?

Nolwenn: Non, c’est une petite ville.

I will ask you to wait for a minute and try to understand the dialogue above because you are familiar with half of the vocabulary and half is new. Let’s see these examples.

Je vais à Paris.

Je vais à New-York.

Je vais à New-Delhi.

Nous allons à Rome.

Do you now have an idea what was the dialogue about? I am sure you understood. Here is the English version. I don’t like the translation but here it’s difficult to teach just by examples. Keep it in mind that English and French have lot of common words but the grammar is totally different. If you try to make a sentence then make it using whatever knowledge you gained in French please do not translate otherwise everything will be messed up.

Nolwenn: Where are you going?

Amrita: We are going to Brest. And you?

Nolwenn: It’s a beautiful small city. I am going to Morlaix.

Anita: Is it a big city?

Nolwenn: No, It’s a small town.

The new verb I introduced is ‘Aller’ that means ‘to go’. ‘Aller’ is one of the most common verbs used in French so you must learn by heart the conjugation.

Aller = to go

Je vais

Tu vas

il/elle va

Vous allez

Nous allons

ils/elles vont

à

Brest

Paris

New-York

Mumbai

What is this strange letter doing in the middle column? ‘à’ is equivalent to the preposition ‘to’. It is pronounced as ‘a’ in ‘art’ ‘dart’ or ‘part’. In French there are more than one ‘to’, different ‘to’ for different places, ‘à’ is used for cities. It’s getting complicated? No not at all it just a question of keeping your memory updated. Remember only one ‘to’ for the moment that is ‘à’.

Tuesday, November 30

Hi all! I am sorry this is not a new lesson as I was busy working on a small glossary of all the words that came in last eight lessons. Hindi is my national language, people say that it is difficult to learn but in my opinion it's one of the most easiest languages to learn or atleast to read. Once you know all the alphabet and accents you can read without any problem because we read as it is written. There are no irregular rules as in English and French that is why it is an excellent way to learn French pronunciation. I am sure this French-Hindi glossary will be a huge help for my Hindi speaking readers. You can find it on the 'French-Hindi' page. I would be very happy to know if there is a blog specialist who can help me how to record an audio file and upload it with a blog post.

Monday, November 22

We are going on a mystery adventure, you must be equipped with all the arms and weapons and should know how to use them . These arms are pronouns, articles, questions and all the vocabulry we learnt in seven lessons. Do you know by heart the use of all these? If no then please go through all the previous lessons, you can find them under the label of ‘French’ at the right hand side. You must be wondering what happened to the ‘Triple A’ team? Where are they? What are they doing?Well!Anita,Amrita and Amandine three students from Paris are still on TGV talking to Nolwenn the ‘Bretonne’ lady. The people from the region of Brittany or Bretagne are called ‘Bretons’, ‘un Breton(masc.)’, une Bretonne(femi.).

Last time Nolwenn asked the names of the three girls 'Comment vous vous appelez?' Every time this question and the answer to this question made me scratch my head. It was a big mystery for me when I was learning French because there was always an apostrophe or some pronoun appeared two times like in the question above.

Comment tu t’appelles?

Comment elle s’appelle ?

Comment elles s’appellent ?

Comment il s’appelle ?

Comment vous vous appelez ?

Je m’appelle Anita.

Elle s’appelle Amrita.

Elles s’appellent Anita et Amrtia.

il s’appelle Brad Pitt.

Je m’appelle Aung Saan Suu kyi.

Those were my very first lessons when I was struggling to adapt myself to French-French learning method, my French teacher told me that I will understand ‘Vous vous appelez’ later on and not to worry about it.My condition was getting worstI could not sleep at night and felt myself hanging on an apostrophe too, so I had to find the answer. I solved the puzzle by translating word to word this question. In French they don’t ask or tell a name like in English ‘What is your name?’ but they say ‘ How you call yourself?’ and the answer is similar too, I call myself Anita, How she calls herself? She calls herself Amrita, How they call themselves? Etc. Etc. The verb used here is s’appeler , this type of verb is called a pronominal verb where the subject performs an action on itself. Ex. Elle s’appelle Angelina –She calls herself Angelina. There are many more pronominal verbs to come but for right now we will not go in too much technical details. Enjoy remixing and matching!

Tuesday, November 9

Anita, Amandine and Amritaor the ‘Triple A’ are on Christmas vacations and going to visit the beautiful coast line of Brittany (Bretagne). They take a Paris-Brest TGV (Très grande vitesse) or Very fast speed train. In the train they meet Nolwenn a lady from Bretagne and the conversation begins.

IfI ask the famous Hollywood star Brad Pitt the same question then first of all people will think that I am from another planet who doesn’t know him but still I will not say "Comment tu t’appelles?" I will phrase the question in a very formal way.

Saturday, October 30

I was drifting on Mozart's music waves and staring at the long row of buildings out of my window. Suddenly a thought flashed in my mind, I have to write something! I picked up the note-book, it's just not 'A' simple note-book because the great designer & creator Jean Paul Gaultier signed his autograph in it. Creativity is flowing through its pages and spilling out of it. Quickly I rushed to kitchen took a glass,collected the precious nectar in it and gulped it down. I was sure it would wake up my sleeping imagination. In few seconds it was running through my veins, eager to reach up to the brain. Soon my eyes were glowing and hands hurried up to grab a pen. Words converted in sentences and sentences in to form of a poem. I wrote poems in Hindi for years then I don't know what hindered me from painting the word picture. Today Jean Paul Gaultier brought me back but the credit goes to one of my friends too who encouraged me few days back to restart. I am posting this poem below,unfortunately only my Indian friends and readers will be able to understand it as it's in Hindi. Who knows? I might start writing in English and French too if I continue to drink JPG brand magic potion. Wait for it!

Thursday, October 28

Creative Polyglot is coming outof the shadow of Polyglutton and trying to find her way toKingdom of France. How to find the way if you don’t know how to ask questions? We will continue our journey through the farm of questions to get back to Formidable France. In last lesson we learnt how to ask two questions:

Comment tu t’appelles?What’s your name?

Qui est-ce?Who is it?

A story of three friends in a college at Paris, Anita, Amrita and Amandine. Anita and Amandine know each other and Amrita will be their new friend. On first day of college Anita sees a lost girl, she goes over and introduces herself.

Bonjour, Je m’appelle Anita.

Comment tu t’appelles?

Bonjour, Je m’appelle Amrita.

Next day Amandine sees her best friend with a new girl.

Bonjour Anita!

Qui est-ce ?

C’est Amrita. (It is Amrita)

Bonjour Amrita!

Je m’appelle Amandine.

You observed one thing that they gave the password ,asked some questions and in return got a brand new friend. What is the password?It’s not only a password or ‘mot de passe’ as they call it in french to open a boxof chocolates but to make friends too. Read the October 6th lesson and start making friends. Of course the story ofthese three friends doesn’t end here, it’s just the begining. And you are going to enjoy the ride.

Amrita is discovering Paris with her new friends. They are roaming around eating delicious Italian ice-cream. (You see Polyglutton is still trying to take hold of Polyglot, I have to be strong and not think too much offood.)

Paris is quite big and I am really tired walking all over the city with these energy packed girls. I have to go and get an ice-cream or why not an Indian kulfi. Did you guess what was the question Amrita was repeating again and again? I am sure you did, if not then write me or I will give the answer in next lesson. If you are wondering what are these words Le, La and L’ then you can find the answer immediately in 15th October lesson. There are two more new prepositions ‘de’ and ‘du’ thatwe will discuss in next lesson.

Tuesday, October 26

I wonder if Polyglot is on the way to become a Polyglutton. I am about to cross all the limits and boundries to obtain this award. My poor stomach was crying out in agony and urging me to halt but I did not listen and continued to devour my master creation. If my husband would not have stopped me to finish the last bit of this silky smooth dish I would have achieved this honour today only. This morning I tried a new recipe of Butter Chicken and the result was marvelous, I was in heaven for few minutes. The aroma is still lingering, can't you feel a sweet odour is pouring in through the internet in to your house? I hope one day it's possible. Believe me if you prepare this dish it will create an explosion of flavour and saveur and take you to a realm where you are the king. Leave a comment to get a ticket to this kingdom.

About me

I am an Indian living in
France since few years. This blog is about Incredible India, Formidable France,my fabric love story and language addiction. I am a polyglot and love learning and teaching languages. I am fond of making colourful bags too. I am curious about what do you think of my blog? A few words will introduce me to some wonderful people out there and of course encourage a beginner like me. Thanks for your visit. Hope you enjoyed it.